Wednesday, September 11, 2019

205 Live Moving Under The NXT Brand?

Newsweek has an interview up with Triple H that discusses the NXT move to the USA Network.

He said that conversations about moving NXT to a cable network have been ongoing for a year and a half to two years.

He also noted that at least one more TakeOver could be added to the schedule. Triple H said, “This past year we had five Takeovers with the brand here and two in the U.K. I think you might see that go up to six in the U.S. and we’ll continue to monitor the U.K. to see what we can add there.”

Another interesting tidbit from the interview was his comments about 205 Live. He acknowledged that the brand has gotten lost in the shuffle.

Triple H said the following about 205 Live: “NXT UK will sit under that NXT banner as well, probably 205 too breathing some life into it a little bit. That creates three distinct brands that talent, over the course of their career – which hopefully is long – where they can migrate from one to the other and be reinvigorated and have fresh starts and have longer, more meaningful and lucrative careers while staying within the same company.”

He added, “You’ll start to see 205 begin to. I think it always existed as an island onto itself, a little bit, and it’s become lost in this limbo. You’ll begin to see it move more towards the NXT banner and the talent there. We have a lot of talent. For them to begin to compete either open against anyone or in the cruiserweight division, but have that title sit under the NXT brand is more meaningful. It creates more opportunities for more people.”

It sounds like the Cruiserweight Championship will be defended on NXT shows. There have been questions about the future of 205 Live with SmackDown moving to FOX in October. There have been rumblings about a third hour of SmackDown being added to FS1 at 10 pm on Friday night’s. If that happens, then there would be no room for the post-SmackDown tapings. We should hear more about the future of that brand in the next couple of weeks.

NXT starts on the USA Network on Wednesday, September 18. The first USA broadcast will feature Matt Riddle vs. Killian Dain in a Street Fight, Bianca Belair vs. Io Shirai vs. Mia Yim in a Triple Threat Match to determine the number 1 contender for Shayna Baszler’s NXT Women’s Championship and Velveteen Dream will defend the NXT North American Championship against Roderick Strong.